Rise of the Dark Lord
by A Redheaded Devil
Summary: Voldemort is back- and his spies are everywhere. A young man takes the mark of murder and infiltrates Hogwarts under no orders but his own. What are his true aims? And how will the Golden Trio react to the knowledge that one of their friends is a traitor?
1. Prologue

Sharp footsteps echoed through the empty halls of Malfoy Manor as the visitor strode towards the dining room. The ominous glow of magical light illuminated vacant rooms as the young man hurried past, and yet his features remained in shadow and his figure, dark. The footsteps twisted and turned, navigating sharp corners, dead ends and convoluted corridors, until, finally, they halted in front of a set of heavy oak doors. As is the case with all things in Malfoy Manor, these doors were painted midnight black, with the Malfoy family crest emblazoned in silver ink in the centre of the massive hunks of carefully sculpted wood. The punishment for scratching these doors was indeed dire, but the brutal discipline of a certain young Malfoy was unimportant to the dark figure, as it raised a pale hand to knock just over the silver painting of a snake. The hand hesitated for the briefest instant, before beating out three short knocks. _Tat. Tat. Tat. _

When an answer was not forthcoming, the young man continued to stand patiently just outside the still-closed doors, until, after several long minutes, he heard a voice calling from beyond the barred entrance.

_ "Enter." _

It was barely more than a hiss, but it was enough. Before the visitor could raise a hand to the handle, the heavy oak swung open with nary a creak, and the dining room was revealed. Not sparing a glance for the opulence and grandeur of his clearly expensive surroundings, the messenger continued across the room until he was standing before the marble dais situated at the end of the room. Where before there was once a great table that could seat over a hundred guests, there now stood a colossal throne, and what a sight it was. Carved from a solid marble slab of the richest ebony and streaked with veins of silver and emerald, it was clearly the most expensive item in a room of extravagant indulgence. But even more intriguing than the thing itself was the figure draped across its arms as if he owned the world. (If you had cared to ask him- but no one ever did- he would have told you in no uncertain terms, that, yes, he did in fact own the world, so take that you filthy muggle, then proceed to Crucio you into insanity before ending your miserable life.)

Tom Marvolo Riddle looked up from the Plans for World Domination (written and edited by Antonin Dolohov) just as the mysterious figure entered the room. He was in a horrific mood because not only was he still recovering from that ordeal at the Ministry, but also because he had heard one of the new recruits call him Moldywarts in the kitchens of Malfoy Manor. As much as he enjoyed torturing and murdering his followers, killing off all those sympathetic to his cause was not going to help him win this war.

Thus, when the man who he assumed to be a messenger bringing yet more bad news to the poor Dark Lord, continued to stand there like a moronic simpleton, he shouldn't be blamed for letting his guard down. "What is it?" he hissed, a murderous expression on his snake-like face. "Who dares disturb the silence of the Dark Hall?"

Dear readers, please don't be annoyed at Voldemort when I say that the next thing that happened caught him completely off-guard. As I have already mentioned, he has had quite a long day, and, with one thing and another, he wasn't prepared to deal with anything more dangerous than an angry schoolteacher.

So it happened that one moment he was glaring at the shadowy figure in minor annoyance, ready to release some of his pent-up anger on the unknowing recruit, and the next he was choking on air as one strong hand clutched at his throat and another held a razor sharp dagger aimed directly at his eyeball. Between the coughing and spluttering, he managed to free one arm from where it was pinned against the chair to call his wand to him, but, to his growing displeasure, found that he was entirely unable to summon his magic, as his magical core felt like it had been blocked by a very heavy object. It said a lot about Tom Riddle's composure that even now, when most wizards would be panicking more than was strictly healthy, that the only thing running through his head was that this was the most annoying thing to happen to him that day to rival the worst days of his life.

He felt warm breath and long hair tickle his ear as the man whispered soft words to his current captive. "Getting complacent, Tom," he whispered, a small smile gracing his lips as he felt Voldemort tense beneath him at the sound of his voice. _"Slip,"_ he breathed, disbelief colouring his voice a mild grey.

_ "You're alive!"_


	2. The Dark Mark

_"Slip," the Dark Lord breathed. _

_"You're alive!"_

Voldemort struggled to breath, the sheer strangeness of it all seemed to have rendered his windpipe incapable of its most basic function. His brain was on overdrive as his mind tried, and failed, to successfully process the shock of the event and come up with a reasonable explanation.

He opened his mouth to say something- then closed it again with a sharp click. What was there to say? One of his best friends from his school days had turned up in his throne room after fifty years of absence from his life. That this very friend was currently holding a knife to his eyeball only complicated matters further.

He finally regained his slightly bruised confidence and managed to force a question out of his disobedient throat. "Are you here to kill me?" he asked, and the narcissistic part of him that occupied the entire back of his brain smirked triumphantly at the strength this phrase was spoken with. Yes, Tom Riddle was definitely on top of things.

The aforementioned ex-best friend mirrored this internal smirk, and replied, "Oh, Tom, you of all people should know that if I wanted you dead your body would be rotting in a gutter before you sat your OWLs!"

With that he stepped back from the throne of the current Dark Lord, and with a deft flick of his wrist, concealed the dagger in his robes where it had previously resided. As he stepped into the dim light of the throne room, he finally dropped the glamour obscuring his features, and chuckled slightly as he saw Tom's pale face turn a strange colour as he struggled to prevent a gasp from escaping between his lips.

He ran his tongue over his teeth as he drank in the handsome features of the young man standing before him. Shoulder-length black hair framed a face of breathtaking beauty, large golden eyes rested above angular cheekbones, the long lashes creating stark contrast between his pale skin and amber eyes.

The man- no, boy- looked to be about sixteen years of age, yet the air around him practically screamed 'dangerous'. This beautiful boy was not someone you'd like to meet on a dark night.

Finally, after a long pause, Voldemort spoke up again; "You haven't changed at all." Slip grinned and twirled a long rod of black wood, which on closer inspection was revealed to be his wand, and replied haughtily, "Surely you haven't forgotten already? My kind don't age like yours do, we're above that," then sniggered, and dropped the pretentious air at once. He rolled his eyes and grinned again. "Still, Tom, you should know better than that."

Tom was becoming more and more annoyed by proceedings, the information he required was not forthcoming, and one of the most dangerous men in the entire world was still standing in his throne room. "What do you want?" he snapped, his impatience poking through his cold outer shell.

Slip lost his grin and cheerful demeanour at once, allowing a nostalgic longing enter his face. _Damn he's a good actor_, the Dark Lord mused, before tearing his focus away from the man's face and to his reply.

"Well, you mightn't be aware of this, but I've been on the continent quite recently doing some travelling and taking care of a few things." His expression darkened at this, and he began pacing in front of the black marble throne, before continuing; "Until finally, after a few exciting decades abroad, I come back to good old England and find you ruling the place. So imagine my surprise when I find out that you'd been defeated, not once, but _five times_ by a _child_!" He spat out the last words so vehemently you'd think that they'd offended his mother.

He stopped pacing to properly face Voldemort and his murderous expression. "Get to the point," Tom snapped. Slip smiled slightly at that. "I came to see if you needed back up. In this body, I can go places that you most certainly can't. I can help you win this war."

Without waiting for a reply from a shocked Tom, he knelt down on bended knee, golden eyes wide with feigned innocence, and said, "Do you, Tom Riddle, take me, to be your illegally marked Death Eater?" Voldemort looked on in shocked seriousness, and said, voice laced with sarcasm, "I do." Slip beamed all over his face as he stepped forward to shake the hand of his former best friend and said, "Well, you're stuck with me now, and there isn't a wizard in the world who can keep me away!" He cackled evilly._ Oh the chaos I'll cause, _he thought fondly.

With that, the two wizards exited the room to follow the winding halls of Malfoy Manor, Tom leading the way throughout the twisted passageways before they came to halt before the familiar sight of another black and silver door.

"Through here," Tom murmured to his silent companion, "This is where all my Death Eaters are marked." With a wave of his hand the doors swung open, and he smiled slightly as he heard the awed gasp come from Slip's throat.

Before them, shining in the light from the magic lamps, were hundreds upon hundreds of silver bottles stacked on shelves placed against all four walls of the room. Each bottle was labeled with the name of the Death Eater it belonged to, and they were sorted alphabetically along the walls, with the initials of the Death Eater in question engraved in silver on the black stopper of the bottle. Slip couldn't contain his amazement at the sheer number of them- the Dark Lord must have spies all over Britain! But then he smiled an evil smile; this would only make his task all the easier.

"If Dumbledore found this..." he murmured to a still-silent Tom, who nodded his agreement. He clapped his hands together. "No more wasting time gawping, we have work to do." He led his awestruck friend towards a silver pedestal situated in the centre of the room and shoved Slip's hand roughly across the surface so the palm was facing upwards. With another wave of his hand, one of the unlabelled bottles came zooming across the room to meet his open arm.

He snatched it out of the air and placed it next to his friends arm before proceeding to withdraw a cruel-looking silver dagger from the folds of his robes. "This won't hurt a bit," he said, then smirked before drawing the dagger across the boy's arm, creating a deep cut that leaked crimson liquid onto the shallow silver bowl of the pedestal. Slip bit his tongue to stop from screaming, and was surprised when coppery blood filled his mouth.

It was all over soon, however, as Voldemort wandlessly siphoned his blood into the silver vial and healed the cut on his arm, till naught remained but a scar. "Almost done," Tom said, in the manner of nurses all over the world, before revealing his wand and dipping the end of it in his friend's blood.

The red liquid turned midnight black, and before Slip could prepare himself, Voldemort had plunged the gory strip of wood in the direction of his arm. This time he did scream, as the blood magic that now bound him to his master ate away at his flesh like acid on carpet, the smell of burnt flesh filling the air as a dark stain spread across his forearm.

After several long, agonising seconds, Tom removed the bloody wand from his arm, and slumped, exhausted, against a bottle-filled rack of shelves. He panted, struggling for air as his exhausted body attempted to recover from the ordeal it had just been through, but soon the pain receded and his heart rate slowed.

Voldemort stood over him, his face unreadable as he addressed his newest recruit. "So what are you going to do now?" Slip looked up at the pale face of his old friend, before stating, "Isn't it obvious?" Tom paused for a second, staring quietly at him, before replying, "No. It isn't." Slip smiled weakly at him, before groaning as the effort this expended allowed the pain to make a comeback. When the world stopped spinning, he met the calculating gaze of the Dark Lord, amber eyes meeting red ones as he said, "I'm going back to Hogwarts."


End file.
